Friday, November 29, 2013

BITS 2013: My Thoughts on Thanatomorphose

The body horror film Thanatomorphose focuses on a girl (Kayden Rose), who lives on her own in an apartment. One day she notices that bruises have appeared over her body and that her hair is starting to fall out. As the days go by, more injuries appear and the girl’s boyfriend (David Tousignant) comments on how she feels cold. It quickly becomes apparent that the girl is slowly decomposing, even though she is still very much alive. She quickly shuts herself into her apartment, as the symptoms of her condition gets a whole lot worse.

Thanatomorphose is a relatively simple film, with only three characters being central to plot, who aren’t really given character names. The vast bulk of the film is focused solely on the girl and there is little to no dialogue in the second half of the film, which sees the girl become a complete recluse, as the decomposition of her body gets worse. It should be noted that the girl spends much of the film completely naked, however it is far from titillating, especially once the rotting of her skin becomes more noticeable. Of course, sexuality does play a huge role in the film, in a somewhat disturbing way.

I would say that the film is more horrific than scary. The film is quite disgusting at times, with probably every body fluid imaginable being shown on screen throughout the course of the film. There is also a certain macabre humour in the film, since the girl is constantly trying to fix herself, by applying bandages or taping and gluing body parts that fall off. I quite appreciated how subtle the film is with its horror and it does not really try to shock the audience for no reason. I also liked the film’s haunting violin score, which helped add to the subtle feel of the film. One aspect of the film that I did not respond to well to is a few scenes of weird discoloured imagery, which looked like something from a Nine Inch Nail videos. These scenes really clashed with the rest of the film.

Thanatomorphose is probably not a film that is meant for the squeamish. However, I have to say that I thought that the film was well-made body horror film, which uses a subtle approach to show this girl’s transformation into a rotting mess. It is quite obvious that the film took inspiration from the early films of David Cronenberg, particularly The Fly. In fact, the girl is seen at one point storing body parts that have fallen off in jars, which is an act that would make Seth Brundle proud.

I definitely recommend this film for folks that like seeing gross body transformations on screen.

About Sean Kelly -

Sean Patrick Kelly is a self-described über-geek, who has been an avid film lover for all his life. He graduated from York University in 2010 with an honours B.A. in Cinema and Media Studies and he likes to believe he knows what he’s talking about when he writes about film (despite occasionally going on pointless rants).